The Anti-Corporate Tech Exec

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When anti-globalization demonstrators took to the streets during June's G8 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, Paul Hawken may have been the only tech executive cheering them on. The cofounder of Smith & Hawken gardening stores — now chair of search firm Groxis — has always fused business acumen with the anti-corporatization philosophy of his books, such as Natural Capitalism.Wired caught up with him in Sausalito, California, to ask how he combines high tech entrepreneurship with tear gas-provoking resistance.

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WIRED: You talk about being anti-corporatization rather than anti-globalization. What's the difference?HAWKEN: I don't believe there is an anti-globalization movement. Globalization already happened. There is a powerful movement to prevent corporations from privatizing the commons, whether it is water, forests, seeds, culture, or the Internet.

Is there a conflict between serving as the voice to that movement and at the same time being chair of a technology company?
There is an implication that people who are trying to address corporate globalization are antitechnology. Technology empowers the so-called anti-globalization movement. In a sense, it's an isomorph of what it resists; it's a complex global network of links and nodes communicating and organizing to create a better world for people. The difference is that the pro-globalization forces are fed by the globalized rich, whereas the voices addressing it arise from, or are informed by, the localized poor. Both have used the Internet, although I would give the edge to the anti-globalizers in terms of using it effectively as a mobilization tool.

What does the mapping of Web searches have to do with making a better world?
People who promote and develop sustainability are not better, smarter, nicer people. They just see the world as a system. Groxis does the same thing, taking computational processes that are linear and tiresome – like a Web search – and transforming them into a systematic visual picture. When we are searching for something in the real world, nature saturates us with input. It's called sight. It's incumbent upon us to gather and present information in a way that's accessible to the whole of society. That's as important as democracy itself. Without that attribute, democracies fail.

Hasn't the Internet already been "corporatized"?
I think it's still up for grabs. The Net is quicksilver. I'm not sure it can be grasped or held. The rules keep changing, the protocols evolving. It doesn't mean there can't be an AOL parsing out bandwidth, but the vitality of the Internet is content, and that can't be controlled. Not in a digital age.